It is a serious question - for example, employed programmers vary in their
productivity by about 10 to 1, as discussed in "The Mythical Man
Month".
In my personal experience, patent 5,106,191 was apllied for a week after a
PhD from a large company was shown and pitched the prototype
embodyment of patent 5,106,192.
That, to me, makes it clear that the PhD had considerable skill in the art,
and found 5,106,192 obvious to the point that he left our plant and figured
out a different way to accomplish the function on the plane home. Was it
ordinary skill? I don't know, since we are talking optical theory.
So this obviousness bar is really vague, and the inflation in education
makes especially difficult -- I work with a batchelor's degreed electrical
engineer I can't get ohm's law out of!
(Christenson)
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